Bail set at $10 million for Black Madam

By Morgan Zalot and Joseph A. Gambardello, Staff Writers

Bail was set at $10 million this morning for a woman arrested by Philadelphia police and charged with injecting another woman with silicone in an illegal buttocks enhancing procedure.

Padge Victoria Windslowe, 42, who has been linked to a death of a British woman following a similar procedure a year ago, also must surrender her passport, the District Attorney's Office said.

Windslowe must post $1 million to get released on bail.

A transgender "gothic hip-hop artist" known as the "Black Madam," Windslowe was arrested Wednesday night at an East Germantown home where she was to host a "pumping party," police said.

She was charged with criminal conspiracy, aggravated assault, theft by deception, deceptive business practices, possession of an instrument of crime, simple assault and reckless endangerment of another person after a 23-year-old woman nearly died of complications from an earlier procedure.

Windslowe had been walking free for more than a year since Claudia Seye Aderotimi died after receiving a butt injection at an airport hotel on Feb. 7, 2011. Authorities did not charge her in that case because they were still awaiting toxicology tests of the injected substance.

Lt. John Walker of the Southwest Detective Division said investigators obtained an arrest warrant after they learned about the latest alleged victim.

Walker said the woman had received an injection from Windslowe at a "pumping party" Feb. 19 in the same East Germantown house where she was arrested last night. The woman was treated for pneumonia at Temple University Hospital within two days of the injection but began coughing up blood last week.

She landed in Lankenau Medical Center for seven days, where she was treated for a pulmonary embolism, he said.

"It's similar to the Aderotimi case," Walker said. "What allegedly happened is Padge Victoria injected her, hit a blood vessel; the substance entered her bloodstream, goes through lands in her lungs."

Walker said the woman was released from the hospital Wednesday but will still have to undergo medical treatment.

He said cops set up surveillance when they learned that Windslowe had planned another pumping party at the house, on Pastorius Street near Baynton.

She arrived at 7:15 p.m., Walker said, and investigators executed a search warrant of the house and arrested her at 7:30 p.m.

Windslowe had needles, Super Glue, cotton balls, paper towels and a pink bag with a 20-ounce water bottle containing an unknown substance believed to be what she would inject during the party, Walker said.

He said five other people were in the house at the time of the arrest, but no injections had been administered.

"We were not gonna let it get that far," Walker said. "We knew she was gonna be there and didn't want to let it get to a point where she was injecting people."

Walker said investigators planned to meet today with officials from the Delaware County Medical Examiner's office and the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office to discuss the case involving Aderotimi's death.

Aderotimi, 20, was an aspiring artist from England who first traveled from England to Philly in November 2010 to receive buttocks injections from Windslowe.

Friends who had traveled here with Aderotimi told detectives that they paid Windslowe $1,800 for what were supposed to be silicone injections

Authorities have said that Windslowe was not cooperating in the investigation.

In a YouTube video posted last year, Windslowe seemed unfazed by the negative publicity and implied that people were still coming to her for injections.

"Out of everything that is going on, my phone is still ringing with girls wanting to come," she said.